December’s Battle Of The Search Conferences

It’s mid-November, when WebmasterWorld’s
PubCon is traditionally held. But all’s quiet on the Las Vegas front. What’s
up? This year, PubCon has moved to December, running head-to-head against
Incisive Media’s SES event in
Chicago. What’s a search marketer to do?

PubCon’s Brett Tabke has said scheduling issues meant PubCon had to move to
December. A convenient excuse for taking on SES? Some think so. Regardless the
reason, the two are colliding. PubCon runs December 4-7 in Las Vegas while SES
runs December 3-7 in Chicago.

I’ve seen any number of posts over the past few months where people are
debating what to do, such as:

I’ve also seen some posts wondering if one show would "kill" the other. The
reality, in my experience, is that the audiences of both shows have relatively
minor overlap. Brett’s show tends to draw heavily from the huge WebmasterWorld
community. It’s almost like a class reunion experience. SES tends to pull
heavily from new search marketers who may not have discovered any online forums.
I’m sure both shows will have a healthy attendance.

The real challenge is on the speaker front. There’s simply no way for
speakers who DO often overlap between the shows to be in both places. PubCon has
worked hard to pull in a lot of the "regulars" on the search marketing
conference circuit. Among the several keynotes, Pubcon also features having
Googler Matt Cutts on the line-up. Of
course, SES has a packed schedule of its own and has two posts recently up
explaining
reasons to attend in general and aguide for
first time attendees.

Had your heart set on hitting a show this year and don’t know what to do? My
advice is look through the agendas of both shows and head for the one with
sessions that seem to be of most interest to you personally or sessions
involving speakers you know and like from your online reading.

Whatever you choose, don’t forget — we’ve got our first big three day search
marketing conference, SMX West,
happening in late February. Here are a few posts about that from us: